Tango Teases “Music Pix,” A Social App For Making Instant Photo Slideshows

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Tango, the mobile messaging platform that raised a massive $280 million from Alibaba earlier this year, has quietly rolled out a new photo-sharing application called Tango Music Pix. The app lets you share your photos along with a song, in order to create 30-second customized slideshows. [UPDATED, see below.]

In the app’s description on iTunes, Tango notes that you won’t need to drag, crop or zoom your photos before sending them out – Tango Music Pix does the editing work for you. That makes the new app sound like something of a competitor to Animoto.

However, Animoto also focuses on the business crowd who want to make quick slideshows for work-related purposes – like a realtor showing off a house for sale to potential buyers, for example. But Tango Music Pix is more squarely aimed at the consumer market, as a slideshow builder that lets you quickly post to Facebook, Twitter, Tango’s flagship messaging app, or share via email.

There are several other apps that play in this general space, too, including Sharalike and Flipagram, for instance.

Music Pix is not Tango’s first effort at building standalone applications that work with its main Tango messaging app. The company follows the playbook of Asian messaging apps like LINE, which offers dozens of complementary apps that work alongside LINE, including games, as well as apps that offer other tools, stickers, cards, and more.

Tango’s app lineup today includes a variety of games, too, from racing games to cards games and even a Flappy Bird clone. However, Music Pix would be the company’s first social application to exist outside its main messaging app.

UPDATE: It seems Tango’s Music Pix was not ready for prime time. Shortly after publication, the app disappeared from the iTunes App Store where it was available as a free download.

However, if you were able to grab it before Tango pulled it out, you can still use the app to build your slideshows. One problem I had with the app during testing was that it loaded up your photo gallery from oldest to newest. That made it difficult to scroll to and select your most recent photos. The app also crashed, but that could be an iOS 8 beta bug, so your mileage may vary. In any event, it’s clear that Tango didn’t want anyone finding out about Music Pix just yet.

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CrunchBase

OverviewTango is an all-in-one social networking app that gives you unique and meaningful ways to interact with your friends and family.
Tango allows you to send free text messages, play games, and make free phone calls and video calls with those you care about. Tango works on iPhones, iPod touch, hundreds of Android phones, Kindle Fire and Blackberry Phone devices, as well as tablets and PCs, and provides …